Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I largely agree with the Library of Congress.

The only exceptions/additions I would make would be:

A.) Some discussions of the man vs. world/world building plot dynamic.

B.) An addendum discussing how horror works, particularly distinguishing it by its commanility of narrative form and tone.

C.) Not really in the same category of certainty as the other but I think it is possible to construct a fairly structured hierarchy of the major fantasy sub-genres. Most of the sub-genres have pretty specific relationships to each other in terms of both structure and prestige, in much the same way that literature has the ability to claim greater prestige over any aspect of the fantasy genre by default and may also carefully co-opt certain tropes. The only area of slippage that I might predict in such a structure would be between varying genres of science fiction. As, for instance, Atwood's claim that she does not write science fiction as there are no ray-guns and monsters, or, on the other hand, the divisions of the fantastic that might result in a book falling into science fiction as we are discussing here.

 

[sword-dancer]

Please do elaborate. The breadth of my fantasy reading is nowhere near as strong as my Sci-Fi, but I'm not offering these definitions from complete illiteracy.
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Kane from Karl Edward Wagner, the "Hero" is in fact the biblical Caine, and his opponents are normally as evil as he is.

Elric, good vs evil?, Elric feeds Souls to his sword, and e is the good guy.

 

[Celebrim]

"It doesn't make much sense for low fantasy though - REH (Conan) or Leiber (Fafhrd/Mouser) though. Or Vance (Dying Earth), or even Gene Wolfe (Book of the New Sun)."

Conan and Fafhrd simply offer different definitions of what is heroic than the Judeo-Christian tradition, but that doesn't mean that Conan and Fafhrd aren't heroic examples. In fact, Conan and Fafhrd are the same sort of characters as Theseus and Oddyseus - both of whom are explicitly within the story moral models despite the fact that we (from our moral perspectives) might find thier treachery less than virtuous. There are several different ways that one can define 'virtue'. One of the classic ways to do it is through a narrative. Conan, Fafhrd, and (for example) The Count du Monte Cristo and John Carter are all classic boy heroes designed to enstill in boys a certain admiration for thier courage, perserverance, cunning, and other classic 'warrior virtues'. Sometimes this is explicitly the goal (it certainly is with ERB's John Carter and Tarzan), and sometimes this is merely a side effect of writing a story which appeals to those 'boyish virtues'. In fact, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser in particular are interesting because there are points in the stories where Fafhrd seems to be on the verge of moral revelation but never quite completes the thoughts that reader reading the story can make.

I've only read one Vance story and I don't remember much of it, but I wouldn't be surprised to find the same true about Vance.

And Gene Wolfe only appears to be a work of low fantasy, and is only fantasy in part (at the least). I generally classify Book of the New Sun as science fiction. Book of the New Sun is an extremely complex work, and its hard to summerize it. Once you begin carving away the settings trappings, he is in fact explicitly science fiction, and one the questions he's most concerned with in Book of the New Sun is what is the nature of identity. Another question he is interested in is how myth shapes the human experience, how stories become myths, and the relationship of telling stories to being human. These are very much the concerns of alot of science fiction stories, and not the primary concerns of a fantasy story. You are not generally going to see a fantasy in which the storyteller weaves the greek myth of Theseus, with the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac, and with a short story by Ray Bradbury for the purpose of talking about how stories shape culture, nor does the typical fantasy retale the Appollo moon landing in mythic terms with a robot who remembers the actually history commenting on how the stories differ from the truth.

 

[Celebrim]

Elric, good vs evil?, Elric feeds Souls to his sword, and he is the good guy.

What do you think the author is trying to assert about good and evil then? Does the protagonist have to be a perfect model of goodness in order for the story to be about the nature of good and evil?

 

[sword-dancer]

I don`t think the author is going in this story anything about good vs evil.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

First off--I didn't read the whole thread...sorry. If I am simply reiterating a view already expressed sorry.

It was my impression that the two genres were not separated through imagery but by ideology.

Phantasy is a setting where it is believed that the past contains more power than the future or present. There is/was a de-evolution. The past holds all of the secrets and the societies of the past were more advanced. Which is why I believe typical imagery for phantasy works contain middle age imagery. The middle ages being one of the few times in human history when it was generally believed that past civilizations were more advanced (though arguably not in actuallity). And with this mystery of past springs usually a secondary or tertiary form of mytery such as magic or monsters--devils of our lack of knowledge if you will.

Science Fiction is a setting that is just the oposite. The future always contains more knowledge and mystery. The further you go into the future the more advanced and powerful you become...understanding controls mystery allowing a leashing of the power through discovery. Magic is usually developed rather than found (magic being a catch word for mysterious powers) and can eventually co-exist as a form of ultimate understanding. Mysteries are a matter of debate and disection rather than faith and acceptance.

Some maintain that science fiction is any medium that contains a degree of science that doesn't exist and phantasy is environment that can never exist save for in the imagination.

I believe these are the general parameters for old genre theory, but with the slow seeping of new genre theory, from rhetoric to literature, I imagine most of these arguments will become mute--if not irrelevant.

 

[Westgate Polks]

Different people define Sci-Fi and Fantasy differently; their view points ARE important depending upon the circumstances. For example, if I am Ray Bradbury and I write a new short story and call it Sci-Fi, then for all intents and purposes that new work will "be" Sci-Fi - at least in terms of how it is marketed and stocked in book stores. Similarly, if I am a senior editor at TOR Publishing and I say a manuscript is Fantasy, then the book will be dealt with accordingly.

If we examine what about the story itself defines it as either Sci-Fi or Fantasy, then we can ignore the above thoughts. I find that Orson Scott Card has working definitions as good as I have seen:

"If the story is set in a universe that follows the same rules as ours, it's science fiction. If the story is set in a universe that doesn't follow our rules, it's fantasy.

In other words, science fiction is about what could be but isn't and fantasy is about what couldn't be." <How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy - O.S. Card>

Starting with (for me) what's makes fantasy really fantasy, magic doesn't exist (at least in the scope of our science and our collective understanding). Therefore, stories containing magic are fantasy. Turning to Sci-Fi, the big item is space flight. And while our current understanding of relativity precludes FTL travel, there is no reason to assume that we COULD NOT develop that technology. Therefore, FTL is a scf-fi artifice.

Using these rules of thumb to explore some common films and books, we determine that Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica are all Sci-FI (well, duh). We get to Star Wars, however, and things begin to get a little crazy. We have the ships, the droids, etc. that all point to Sci-Fi. But we get to The Force and we have to think awhile. If The Force is magic, then Star Wars would be a fantasy work. But very few (if any) people would NOT consider Star Wars Sci-Fi. Therefore, we have to find a way to explain The Force using the laws of our universe; it's not easy. Looking at the Lord of the Rings, the magic of Gandalf, Sauron, and Saruman clearly make the trilogy as fantasy. The same is true of the Wheel of Time series.

The biggest division seems to be magic - because our universe does not seem to include magic (certainly nothing in our scientific knowledge points to magic) it's presence essentially instantly indicates Fantasy.

The real stickler (and the item that led to this thread) is psionics. These abilities seem to be magical (or at least mirror magical effects) and yet they exist is what appear to be Sci-Fi realms. I believe we classify these abilities as mental (either as the product of different synaptic pathways, the usage of a higher percentage of brain capacity, or as some type of mutation). Of course, this leads to the introduction of a "Sci-Fi" element into a "Fantasy" setting and some people disdain that notion (or visa-versa).

 

[Celebrim]

Using these rules of thumb to explore some common films and books, we determine that Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica are all Sci-FI (well, duh). We get to Star Wars, however, and things begin to get a little crazy. We have the ships, the droids, etc. that all point to Sci-Fi. But we get to The Force and we have to think awhile. If The Force is magic, then Star Wars would be a fantasy work. But very few (if any) people would NOT consider Star Wars Sci-Fi.

Well, I'm one of those people that most certainly does not consider Star Wars sci-fi. It's a typical faerie tale story of farmboy meets wizard, goes on quest to save a princess, learns to use a sword and magic, and ends up slaying the 'dragon' and saving the kingdom. The fact that the sword is a 'light sabre', the wizard is a 'jedi', and the stead is a starship is pretty much irrelevant.

Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 are borderline cases which are really hard to classify and it would probably depend on the particular episode in question. Some of the episodes are science fiction in character, but mostly they are fantasy.

Babylon 5 features angels, demons, magic (psionics) and a battle between good and evil. Psionics are nothing but magic. They make no attempt to appeal to any rational force, and there is no attempt to explain how they defy principals like conservation of energy.

Likewise, Battlestar Galactica features angels, demons, and is principally interested in theological questions like 'who is god?', 'where do we come from?', 'is this all that there is?' and 'what is the difference between good and evil'? This was certainly true of the old battlestar galatica, and appears to be true of the new Battlestar Galactica. So sure, there are some sci-fi elements to both B5 and BG, but both of them belong to the much wider range of fantasy.

Star Trek is similarly complex and deals with different themes from episode to episode, but it leans more strongly Sci-Fi than either B5 or BG. Despite its meaningless technobabble, elves (vulcans), orcs (klingons) the typical episode is that we get to meet something which isn't human, and then we get to see how this thing that isn't human is different or similar to humans.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Star Wars is phantasy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm afraid I'd have to categorize Vance's Dying Earth stories as sci-fi, despite the fantasy feel and the fact that they're the origin of IOUN Stones and the "fire and forget" magic system common to all versions of D&D. Other aspects of the story are clearly sci-fi (setting the stories hundreds of millions of years into the future of Earth is one)- and the "magic" of the stories could just as easlly be explained by Clark's aphorism about high-tech.

Celebrim
Well, I'm one of those people that most certainly does not consider Star Wars sci-fi. It's a typical faerie tale story of farmboy meets wizard, goes on quest to save a princess, learns to use a sword and magic, and ends up slaying the 'dragon' and saving the kingdom. The fact that the sword is a 'light sabre', the wizard is a 'jedi', and the stead is a starship is pretty much irrelevant.

That tech is not irrelevant at all. That storyline plus the interstellar tech level trappings put Star Wars solidly into the subgenre of Sci-fi called space opera. The impossible odds, the mysticism, etc., would be completely familiar to any audience in the past 500 years but for the fact that its all wrapped up in technology.

See also Battlefield Earth, in which virtually powerless humans throw off the shackles of interplanetary, slavery, largely through the interaction of luck and deus ex machina. In hard sci-fi, those humans would be dust (possibly literally), yet because this is space-opera, success is never in doubt. The outcome is certain, what is in question is the journey.

In space opera, what matters is the story (which is usually some variant on a classical trope). The heroes must succeed, the villains must fail, and all must do so spectacularly. When something would render the desirable outcome impossible, <insert technology here>. The tech is the magic is the tech.